Heiress On Fire by Kellie McCourt

Author:Kellie McCourt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HQ Fiction
Published: 2020-11-20T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 18

BANANAS

I woke up in the pool house to the buttery waft of freshly pressed waffles and the heart-warming aroma of French pressed coffee coming from the bedside table. Lingering in the background was the scent of organic lemon cleaning products. That meant the breakfast tray had been recently delivered by Patricia. The soy milk would be full fat.

I could not smell Esmerelda (thank God) but I knew she was close. I could feel her laissez-faire Doberman presence. Wait, I could ‘feel’ her. What was that? I was turning into my mother! Too bad I didn’t wake up one morning with her waistline and cheekbones. Funny how that works.

I opened my eyes and looked around. The room was empty. Thank you God for the small mercies in life. I sat up and found myself once again dressed in one of my own satin nightgowns. Thank you capitalism for maids who were happy to exchange low standards for high wages. Clean. Clean satin. Clean knickers.

Wait. A wave of panic broke over me. I clutched my stomach, my ribcage, my hips. Nothing. There was nothing there. The lookbook! The collectible MM Magic Models magazine featuring Crystal Devine. It was gone! I may have uttered an expletive under my breath. All that humiliation and terror, for nothing! We were so close.

‘Looking for this?’ said Esmerelda, standing in the doorway holding the magazine.

‘You scared the life out of me!’ I snapped. Internally I breathed a sigh of relief. There it was, proof Crystal Devine was very real and very much an escort.

‘How did you get it out of,’ I rolled my eyes towards my abdomen, ‘there?’

‘The same way I got it in there,’ she said flatly.

Terrific. That was just wonderful. I blocked the image of Esmerelda pulling the glossy sex worker menu out of my underwear in front of Searing while he heaved my unconscious body down the fire escape of a bordello at an ungodly hour of the night. Terrific. Wonderful. Fantastic. I was absolutely going to bitch slap the next journalist who called my life privileged.

Calm down. Think silver lining.

‘Searing saw it? He saw the lookbook?’ I asked expectantly. ‘He knows about Crystal?’

At least the police now knew who Crystal was, a sex worker, and that she worked for Magic Models. They could go ahead and match dental records or DNA or whatever it was they did. That had to help me.

Esmerelda shook her head. ‘Nup.’

‘No?’

‘Ah, nope.’

‘No?’

‘I like lifted it before you hit the ground.’

‘I hit the ground?’ I began feeling my body, searching for bruises.

‘Uh-huh,’ she said and took the brownest, crispiest waffle off my tray.

I had a small out-of-body experience watching myself rise from the bed and begin shouting.

‘What is wrong with you? Why did I get dropped? Why didn’t you show him the MM magazine?’ I smacked the waffle out of her hand, back onto the plate.

‘He’s a cop!’ she yelled, as if that made sense. And promptly grabbed the waffle back up off the plate, biting into it before I could retrieve it from her again.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.